Tag: Rosie Parade

Lelo What’s Good blends ballroom and gqom

Lelo What’s Good is a Johannesburg-based multidisciplinary creative that got into DJing unexpectedly. He met FAKA‘s Desire Marea while living in Durban. Upon returning to Johannesburg to study, he got to know Fela Gucci who invited him to play at Cunty Power.

“I decided to come through and play. That’s when it started. After that I started getting booked, which was a bit hectic. I didn’t plan for it to be quite honest,” recalls Lelo. The gig led to him being invited by Pussy Party‘s Rosie Parade to attend DJ workshops in order to hone his skills. “I went to her and we just hit it off and she really helped me a lot in starting this new adventure that I was going on. Before I knew it, I was on lineups, people asking me to play places. It’s been interesting.”

Fascinated by music videos from a young age, Lelo was exposed to artists such as Missy Elliot, Aaliyah, Destiny’s Child, Beyonce, D’Angelo, Lauryn Hill the Fugees as well as local artists such as Lebo M, Zola, Boom Shaka & Brenda Fassie. As a DJ, he likes to push an alternative, grungy sound that draws a lot from ballroom and underground UK warehouse music as well as the raw sounds of Durban’s gqom.

Thanks in part to his affinity for ballroom music and a desire to create safe spaces for the queer community, Lelo What’s Good founded Vogue Nights. This saw him bringing New York’s ballroom subculture to life in South Africa. “The ballroom scene in New York shifted culture, it uplifted the LGBTQI community into what we know it [to be] today. If you look at it now there’s ballroom all over the world, Berlin, Paris, London, and we don’t really have one here. So I thought since I play ballroom type music and there aren’t a lot of safe spaces for us to actually venture our bodies in, so why not create a space that speaks for us and is by us in the city and also take it around the country. Because we never really had that. So it’s a response to that. An urge to create more safer spaces.” explains Lelo.

Beyond the parties he throws and the music he plays, Lelo What’s Good aims to be a representative of South African queer culture. “I think I do represent the people in my community to mainstream media. Everything that I’ve written is about queer artists or safe spaces and things like that. I do my best to accurately represent the times that we are in now as queer people, in queer bodies, whether it be as artists or the person down the road and how they might be feeling. I think that’s the type of content I’m trying to create, to write about and speak about. Even the places that I DJ at, they have to be 100% safe for femme bodies and queer people. It’s really important.”

31 July 2018
Gaika Performs in the Heart of Jo’burg’s Party Culture – Kitcheners

Built in 1902 Kitcheners (KCB) has been the general stomping ground for generations upon generations of creatives, artists and students alike. Famed as the second oldest building in the city, there is no one occupant of this city who doesn’t know about it. It is more than fitting then that Gaika would perform the Johannesburg leg of his tour at this historic venue.

Arriving prior to the show, at 18:30 sharp for my interview with him it was eminent that nothing about KCB changes. The built-in upholstered cushioning that surrounds the dance room has reached the end of its lifetime of elegance and is peeling at the seams, presumably due to countless back and bottom harassment from eager party goers. As I walked into the crowded dance floor space the media was closed in by means of the glass and wooden door room dividers. Flashbacks from my student days spent body against body grinding out to some of South Africa’s best local talent all came rushing back to me as my feet stuck to the sticky floor and a minor sweat temporarily took hold of me.

There he was, locked in a video interview as I waited patiently for my turn to speak to the underground London-based artist. Camo pants, nude Nikes, a white top and a denim shirt loosely styled made up his attire. His demeanour was different from his music. He was calm, relaxed, open, and inviting. Unlike his experimental rap that oozes with pointed criticism on society and a near dystopian future. My turn finally arrived and he smiled at me with kindness, shaking my hand for an official introduction.

I took a seat next to him and in conversation, I saw a personal side to the artist I had never heard in his lyrics or seen published in any article. A visitor to South Africa for the second time in his life he shared with me that his visit was vastly different from the first he made as a child. Describing it as an emotional experience, Gaika tells me that the decision to embark on this tour was greatly motivated by his need to travel to the furthest place.

With an ability to partake in an intimate conversation, and seconds later retort with aloofness, I asked him about what he would perform for us that evening. “My records.” He told me as I tried to flesh out more. “I don’t want to ruin the magic so you’ll have to find out.”

He described his passage into music, “I fell into it really. I always wanted to be around music. I was a visual artist and around musical culture and one day I just decided I want to make music and just got lucky that opportunities arose for me to do that. I was never a kid with a hair brush in the mirror like I wanted to be a singer. My dad got sick and I just decided that you only live once and you’ve got to follow some of the things that you are too scared to follow. Or too scared to try and so I did and I’m quite committed. I want to do it properly. I don’t want to half do things.”

What stuck with me most was his response to what inspires him “Everything and nothing”. After some prying, he tells me that the sounds of early 80s and 90s film music act as an influence that he can recreate and interpret in his own way. It is as though Gaika finds comfort and inspiration from sounds of his early childhood or as he likes to call it, “kid music”. He does, however, caution by stating that, “I’m not really aware of influences”.

Dark musical undertones, otherworldly hard-hitting bass and sharp criticism found in his lyrics got me to the question of a possible pessimistic outlook. He responds to me confidently “No that isn’t true. I’m an optimist and a realist. I say it like it is. If it’s uncomfortable it’s uncomfortable. I don’t think I focus on negatives in my life. In my music that can be quite a criticism of energy that I bring out. Things can only get better from confronting what’s wrong in the first place.”

In parting, he shares with me that he would enjoy another tour like this in the future. The evening draws on as the dance floor greets sets by Rosie Parade and Kajama. 23:00 and the underground thunder of Gaika breaks loose. His sound intoxicates not only KCB but the streets in its surrounds.

His outfit has changed. Dressed in all black his music seems to inhabit every human form on the dance floor. The bass amplified and clinical leave my teeth on a near clatter. As he jumps and dances and throws his arms, so the crowd follows in imitation. The music in my bones, in all the life forms stacked on the dance floor, and in the old floorboards of KCB during his performance was so abundant that keeping my camera stable was a balancing act in itself. Gaika spits his lyrics with such intensity it makes his lyrics come across as dogmatic, with synchronized rhythmic bodies as followers of his sonic dogma. His ‘Security’ album takes hold of us and he asks, he pleas for a future of equality. Seeing Gaika live at KCB was nothing short of extraordinary. His vigour for his experimental practice will forever live on in my memory.

13 February 2018
Follow Me Down to the Rose Parade – the lyrical sounds of conscious criticality

Beneath a canopy of banana leaf palms on a summer afternoon, a sweet voice delivers critical personal politics with vibrant enthusiasm. Gently tussled brunette locks move rhythmically in the breeze. The contagious smile that radiates an abundance of warmth, gleams through Colleen Balchin. Otherwise known as Rosie Parade, her sparkling eyes can’t help but dazzle and charm all who cross her path.

Rosie Parade first officially graced the decks in 2012. The sound of her set was carried by the August winds on Womxn’s Day. A year or so before that on a less formal occasion, the whispery vocals of Elliott Smith reverberated throughout the floor as one of the first songs she played out. A daunting and tentative moment, an immersion into sound. After her debut, Riaan Botha – the partnering entity of Broaden a New Sound – declared her Rosie Parade, a play on the name of her favorite Elliott Smith song.

The creative manifestation of Rosie Parade culminated from a long and complex relationship with music. Colleen had begun by attending Punk Rock gigs in Edenvale at the tender age of fourteen years old. Music had always resonated with her, however her interest fully emerged in the formative years of romping around in clubs to dance-punk.

Her diverse taste has been cultivated over the years. In all her experience, one of the sentiments that she holds dearest is that the curation of a mix has “gotta sound like you”. The notion of remaining true to oneself is at the center of her practice as an artist. She describes the most poignant moments of performing any set is looking out into the sea of faces from behind the decks and seeing someone dancing with their eyes closed. A blissful moment of complete enthrallment. An activation of audience.

Colleen engages in multiple roles within the industry. Predominantly based out of the well-loved Kitchener’s Carvery Bar, she often has the opportunity of working the door. The idea of the ‘magic mix’ – most notoriously cultivated by Berlin’s Berghain & Panorama Bar – requires being discerning of one’s potential audience and constructing a fairly strict door policy as a means of ensuring that patrons have the best possible time. “It’s a little bit of a lot of different things, so that everything can be its own flavour.”

Kitchener’s is at the heart of her short-term project, articulating a desire to create a space in which people are able to enjoy being open and break down interpersonal boundaries whilst fostering local talent. She says that, “there shouldn’t be a sense of exclusivity, there should be a sense of inclusivity.”

Her background in theatre, having graduated with an Honours in Dramatic Arts from Wits, nurtured a relationship with this form of the Arts. After leaving university, she discovered the mesmerizing space of Johannesburg night-clubs. “You’ve got the flow of everything throughout the night; the joint experience, the performance aspect”, they all act in unison.

This became a space in which she could use the transferable skills and established passion to further expand and engage with the platform. “Kitchener’s is like a big performance piece to me. I know who my actors are; the girls at the booth…the DJ, the door staff and now I’m trying to get the bar tenders in there also” she says playfully.

The comparison continues, “In a theatre production there is catharsis at the end: there’s a problem, you solve it, and then there is catharsis. I feel like in a club there is a lot of opportunity for catharsis, whether or not there is an explicit problem, there is that sense of something having happened at the end of the night…and that shit’s good for people.” Colleen aims to generate that feeling through both her work on the door and as Rosie Parade.

As part of the larger project of societal unlearning and healing, the Pussy Party developed in May last year. “It felt like an obvious step by the time we realized we could do it” as the bar’s ‘student night’ she began to unpack what that means conceptually, “it’s about experimentation, it’s a space to learn”.

The result has manifested as a series of DJ workshops for womxn and all-femme lineups. “This rape culture shit, in this country, in this city, in Kitchener’s. So many womxn will say that they won’t come out because they get hassled.” Colleen is determined to change that one step at a time. Pussy Party was a way to create a space in response to the systematic violence enacted upon womxn and their bodies on a daily basis.

Historically, “if you look at disco culture there is that sense of community and inclusiveness and a sense of reshaping toxic social dynamics.” Part of her project is to utilize skills and resources in a social space of collaboration to change and reframe gendered relationships.

“Dominator culture has tried to keep us all afraid, to make us choose safety instead of risk, sameness instead of diversity. Moving through that fear, finding out what connects us, revelling in our differences; this is the process that brings us closer, that gives us a world of shared values, of meaningful community.”

― bell hooks

Special thanks to the Summit Club for supporting the shoot.

Shoot Credits

Look 1: Rosie wears blouson by H&M, jeans and boots by Diesel, accessories stylists own.

Look 2: Rosie wears hoodie by H&M, jeans and boots by Diesel, accessories stylists own.

Look 3: Rosie wears t-shirt by H&M, accessories stylists own.

Photography by Chris Saunders

Styling by Jamal Nxedlana

Hair & Makeup by Orli Meiri

Photographers assistant – Tk Mogotsi

Stylists assistant – Silke Holzschuher

8 February 2017
If Kitchener’s (KCB) is like a home

“There are venues and there are institutions”, I was once told: a friend attempting to draw categories in Johannesburg’s night-time cartography. Undoubtedly, Kitchener’s (or KCB) falls into the latter group. It’s the ‘go-to’ club when you have no prior plans. It’s the comfort of knowing the sound and crowd to expect when you arrive. It’s the ease of no dress code and affordable entrance fees. It’s the knowledge that you’ll likely see at least ten other people you know. “If the question is, where do we go to party [tonight], we are the first call”, says DJ/manager Andrew Clements.

Among the audiences, artists and curators of KCB are those who speak of it as ‘home’. “Home isn’t where you come from”, said author Pierce Brown, “It’s where you find light when all grows dark.”

If KCB is a home, it is one whose family stretches back generations. The pub/hotel was built in 1902 and is regarded as the second oldest building in Johannesburg. It is a testament to the historical centrality of our night venues. Radium Beer Hall, Kitchener’s Carvery Bar (KCB), Guildhall Pub have watched generations of dreamers and workers spill their histories over bar counters — wrestling with the possibilities and futures of the city. Marc Latilla, one of the first DJs to ever play at KCB, has sought to archive the venue’s history: another indication that night-dwellers are often keepers of suppressed urban narratives.

According to Latilla, by the end of the 18^th century, Braamfontein had transformed from farmlands into a thriving middle-class suburb. The Milner Park Hotel, now known as Kitchener’s, was built in 1902, surrounded by German businesses. It served as a drinking hole for British troops, as well as postal riders on their way to Pretoria. In 1902, towards the end of the Second South African War, Lord Milner had a meeting with the notorious commander of the British forces, General Lord Kitchener, in the newly-built hotel. Kitchener had been a brutal warlord: primary instigator of South Africa’s concentration camps, in which thousands of Boers and black Africans were killed, mostly women and children. The name ‘Kitchener’s’ is thought to have arisen from this “auspicious” meeting.

If KCB is a home, this is the family’s ugly origins: it’s ancestral elder, a colonial brute, whose legacy continues to cause disquiet among his descendants. Still, his portrait hangs from the mantelpiece, above the figurative fireplace, where his great grandchildren dance and cuss and caress and worship, along with the descendants of his victims. These young ones burst through at night, trampling on grandma’s wooden floors, spilling on the old carpet, brushing past the velvet wallpaper. Each time, confronting history with a cocktail of detachment, denial, and dissent. It is a story of “dancing on graves”, of repossessing haunted spaces. You see it not only here but in the parties at the old train station, Halloween blowouts at the Voortrekker Monument, projected images of Hector Peterson at Soweto’s Zone 6.

The new generation of revelers took root at KCB in 2009, when Andrew Clements began using and hiring out the old hotel for parties. “This used to be just an old man’s club”, Andrew explains,“where a bunch of 60-year-olds would come every day at lunchtime, have a few beers, and then come back again after work. By 6 or 7 the place would close up”. But as DJ’s re-imagined the dusty Bar and Carvery, and the parties grew, and KCB quickly became a living room for young creatives, experimenters, hipsters, and students.

If KCB is a home, then, like any other home, it is not just about love, safety, memory and identity. There is also domestic power and sources of conflict. A strong sense of community often comes with a shared culture: away of dressing, speaking, moving on the dance floor, that has the potential to alienate others. Money, too, can also mess with families. One regular told me that he experienced a class territorialism that would make it difficult for someone who regularly partied at a tavern to party at KCB. To add to this are gender disparities, with femme bodies particularly under threat. Elders and relatives may try to intervene: we’ve seen dance floor dissent at the monthly Pussy Parties, the introduction of a female bouncer, regular and recognizable door staff, and a huge diversity of music genres to boost inclusivity. But families, inevitably, are sources of both contest and comfort.

If KCB is a home, it is one built on music. For years, DJ’s Rosie Parade and Danger Ngozi, of Broaden a New Sound, have curated its sonic identity,rooted in quality, pioneering music. There are family reunions with regular artists and promoters: 2 Sides of the Beat, Kid Fonque, BeatNN and Subterranean Wavelength. And then there are visits from distant relatives. This year: Tendai ‘Baba’ Maraire, Hussein Kalonji, Tama Sumo and Lakuti. And of course there are family events: Disco de la Mode is a group trip to the beach; Below the Bassline a spiritual gathering around the dinner table, and Zonke Bonke like your uncle’s birthday party.The soundtrack is not from your radio or television. It’s the specially-curated playlists that this family has come to love: exchanging sounds, travels and collections across time and space. Like all good household gatherings, the food keeps coming till the early hours of the morning. At 4am, you’re helping your exhausted cousin out the door. And, as author Wendy Wunder once said of a home: “It feels good to leave. Even better to come back”.

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA

1 February 2017
Pussy Party Politik

It’s dark and warm in the sweet sweat-scented nightclub. Exclusively female and femme-identified DJs stroke the decks — a sonic pleasure patrol, an Empress insurrection. There’s a Hello Kitty pussy-cat vagazzling the DJ booth, backlit by velvet and a lick of pink lighting. Think Pussy Pride. Pussy Play. Pussy Power. Pussy Party. It’s a story about how femme bodies might take back the dancefloor.

Pussy Party pops off every second Wednesday of the month at Kitcheners, offering a platform in which femme DJs and artists can “practice, incubate, exchange and expose”. The organisers describe it as“an experiment in amplifying feminine energy on the dance floor”, an act of “yielding beyond the gender binary”, a femmeditation. In a thickly and narrowly-defined masculine industry, Pussy Party has sought to nurture and celebrate young female and femme-identified talent: each party is preceded by a three-hour workshop for aspirant femme selektas.

Three months in, Pussy Parties have boasted a fierce line-up of femme foxes: SistaMatik, FAKA, Lady Skollie, DJ Doowop, DJ Mystikal Ebony, LoveslavePhola, and Lil Bow. But the curators, creators, and dancefloor equators behind Pussy Party are DJs Phatstoki and Rosie Parade. Rosie Parade (AKA Coco) is part of Broaden a New Sound, music curators for Kitcheners.

‘When we arrived at Kitcheners, in 2009, courtesy of Andrew the DJ, there was nothing. There wasn’t 70 Juta. There wasn’t Smokehouse. Nothing was happening at Alexander Theatre. Kitcheners was a dive bar. I had my 21^st birthday here at a time when what is now the bathroom was the office, when Great Dane was just an empty hall. Initially Kitcheners was the type of venue anyone could book. Butin late 2014 we were conscious to say ‘Okay, what’s happening to the space around us? What’s happening to the club? What’s happening to the dancefloor?‘

Phatstoki (AKA Gontse) is a music mixologist and penetrating photographer, whose artistic raw material has been gathered through a lifetime of traversing city, suburb, village and Soweto, where she now lives. Phatstoki’s fluid audio-eclecticism resonated with Broaden a New Sound, whose mandate has been to curate genre-bending, and in this case, gender-bending night-spaces. ‘Phatsoki’s had this series of mixes called Boobs and Honey ’Rosie Parade remembers. ‘Boobs and Honey! Those are literally like my top two things (laughs) ’The two groove goddesses, Rosie Parade and Phatstoki became reciprocal fan-girls, teaming up to create what is now Pussy Party.

‘I remember walking through the club and being approached constantly’, Rosie Parade says, ‘being pressurised constantly by men.’ Whether a baggy hoody, or a tight skirt, or a long dress — each garment is re-imagined as the self-same solicitation. And so, femme bodies are propelled through a current of pull—stroke—squeeze—clutch. The crowd become an excuse to make the brash laying of hands appear accidental. And the dancefloor — ‘Hey baby’ — becomes — ‘You look like a million dollars’ — an exercise — ‘I like your…’ — in carving out space and protecting one’s borders. Just the presence of a woman in a nightclub, particularly if alone, can be read as implicit consent for all manner of invasions.

Then there are those femme bodies that outwardly supersede gender circumscription. Courageous, embattled bodies living dangerous, defiant and godly in a beyond-binary space — whose bodies are cowardly read as provocations to violence. As Desire Marea of FAKA once told me, a proximate dance might result in a punch to the face.

‘Looking at the dancefloor’, Rosie Parade explained, ‘there came a point [where we as Kitchener’s management thought] ‘Okay there’s a lot of guys. Women [and femme-identified men] are telling us that they feel unsafe. That’s not a positive club environment. I’m privileged that the management and staff at Kitcheners trust and respect me. So it’s about ‘What do I have that I can use?’ And for me, this space, and these people, this is what I have that I can use’

‘Maybe’, says Phatstoki,‘there’s a space for women/femme energies to actually own the dancefloor — not just necessarily own the dancefloor so that guys can hang around, but own the dancefloor ‘cos we actually wanna party, for us. We are the party, so can we actually be given the space to do just that.’

Go to an instalment of Pussy Party and you’ll still find many men. ‘To be quite honest I don’t think femmes want to exclude men’ Phatstoki says. ‘We just want some goddamn respect! Maybe this is a way we can teach them. Ya’ll are more than welcome, but ya’ll need to know what this party is about. If you don’t like it, by all means [leave]… if you wanna appreciate our efforts and party with us, please do…’ But understand that ‘it’s not your night tonight, you know’.

True to its name, Pussy Party, in monthly cycles, sets out to be a place of warmth, and pleasure — to cradle and excite us. It changes its shape to let us in, remoulding the club-space into a femme-positive experimental sanctuary. It can ache for us. It can be potentiallylife-giving. But, as with any pussy, right of admission is reserved. There are pre-requisites of respect, appreciation and recognition that Pussy Party is grappling with enforcing.

‘Actually’, Rosie Parade says,‘what’s been simple is: put women behind the decks, or femme-identified individuals behind the decks [and] the femmes in the space respond. Tell people that it’s a space for femmes and honeys will come through’.

Both Rosie Parade and Phatstoki know that this is the awkward, messy, beautiful beginning — of a movement to disrupt club cultures. ‘It’s still marginalised. You couldn’t do this on a weekend. We’re mid-week and we’re mid-month. It’s not payday weekend’.

They also know that Pussy Party, as it stands, attracts a particular, pre-defined Model C, middle class. ‘But [for this space], this is how it starts’, says Phatstoki. ‘I want to bring these issues up, and depending on how we address them, that’s when I’ll know if we’re serious about the movement or not. [We need to make sure we] don’t forget those who go through the most [regarding this subject].’

The Pussy Party agenda aspires to openness. ‘Come through and tap us on the shoulder and say what’s up. This is the night to come through. If you have a problem coming through, tell us about the problem. I think you need to admit where you’ve gone wrong and made mistakes ’Rosie Parade says. ‘Openness. That’s a big part of a femme party’, Phatstoki adds, smiling. ‘That flexibility. It can stretch’, laughs Rosie Parade, ‘and it can shrink. It can self-lubricate’.

26 July 2016